Presentation

The concept of the "Touch the future"
exhibition was to give to the general public the opportunity to learn
directly, through the sense of touch and through visual and audio
perceptions, the last productions of research laboratories in such
different domains as gestural, visual and sound interactions, virtual
realities, tele-operation and their social applications in art,
culture, medicine, sports and entertainment. The conceptual
link between presented demos is that of "enaction", that
tries to develop the most natural and intuitive human-computer
interface and, in particular, those based on gestures, actions and
manual tasks.

The idea behind "Touch the Future" was
to take advantage of the natural attractivity of the topics developed
by Enactive Interfaces NoE on multimodal interaction, virtual
realities, teleoperation and they social use in industry, arts,
culture, medicine, sport and leisure, to invite people to experiment by
their senses and their actions the concept of "enaction". They have
noticeably led to experiment a great number of Emblematic Enactive
Scenario situations developped by Enactive Interfaces NoE.

The booths presented at "Touch the
Future" were in the same time in a raw state (technologies was
presented "as they are") but also in a sufficient shape to allow
visitors to be guided in its visit. For instance, on each booth, a
poster was explaining in French and in English the experiment in terms
understandable by a non-expert public.

At the entrance of "Touch the Future"
space, sculptures of the artist Rosalyn Driscoll have been placed.
Those sculptures made to be touch are questioning our perceptions and
our way to define an object. They aimed at lead people to be in a state
of mind favorable to questions about perceptions and representations of
the world.

"Touch the Futur" exhibition aimed at
being an important moment for accessibility to the results of Enactive
Networks. In addition to Enactive Partners Booth, ICA-ACROE have also
invited researchers of Grenoble whose experiment are close to Enactive
concern to present their own demo. This was the case of France Telecom
Research Group, LPNC (Laboratoire de psychologie et de neurocognition
of UPMF University, Grenoble) and TIMC (Techniques de l’Ingénierie
Médicale et de la Complexité - Informatique, Mathématiques et
Applications de Grenoble) laboratories.

1. That visitors leave the demo space having learned something about
the actual situation of interaction and communication's techniques used
in Information and Communication's Technologies.

2. That visitors realize that all ordinary human-computer interfaces
are based on symbolic or iconic representations and that, consequently,
these interfaces are not able to support manual tasks. For example, the
only way to learn violin is to try and reproduce the instrumental
gestures of the teacher. What happens in manual activities that cannot
be described by signs and symbols, by language or diagrams ?

3. That visitors understand that it is not so simple to answer to
questions like "How do I know that this object is this object?".
Manipulating objects without seeing, or hearing, or even feeling with
only the hands is a very odd experience which leads to deeply feel the
complexity of these questions. Visitors, guided all along the
demonstrations by interactive panels, will be invited to experiment
this by themselves.

Since most of the demos are highly
"touch-oriented", they were designed in order to be experimented by
disabled people, particularly visually impaired people. A visit of
"Touch the Future" will be organised in partnership with the "Service
Accueil Handicap" and the "Culture et Vie Universitaire" mission of the
universities of Grenoble.

Participation

Apart the
participants to the conference, "Touch the Future" welcomed more than
100 people each day. For the 250 participants to Enactive 07
Conference, specific periods in ENACTIVE/07 schedule have been planed
to allow these participants as a specific public to attend to "Touch
the Future" : from 15.20 to 16.20 the 20th of November and from 12.00
to 13.00 the 21st of November.
Thus, apart people of the conference, about 600 people attended "Touch
the Future".

From the 20th to the 23th, visitors were:
- 50 % of students.
-
30 % of researchers in various domains. A huge proportion of them was
scientists (technology, psychology, philosophy). A residual part was
artists.
- 20 % of general public with a large
proportion of families.

4
scholar classes also attended the event. These scholar classes were
technical classes brougth at "Touch the Future" by their teachers in
technology.

On Saturday, the 24th, visitors were rather exclusively of general
public.